It
was part of a carefully planned effort by the United Jewish
Federation to minimize the impact of Finkelstein's
appearance by quietly filling the seats of the lecture hall
with Jews ...

Pittsburgh,Tuesday, March 15,
2005

Jewish
community lines up to blunt message of anti-Zionist
author

By Caitlin
Cleary,Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette

Norman
Finkelstein speaks at Carnegie Mellon University.

PITTSBURGH's
Jewish community turned out in force last night for
Norman G. Finkelstein's lecture at Carnegie Mellon
University. People lined up by the dozen more than an hour
before the speech began, anxious to claim a seat in McConomy
Auditorium.

Normally, this is not
Finkelstein's crowd. The scholar and author of books like
the international best-seller "The Holocaust Industry" and
the forthcoming "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of
Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History," Finkelstein argues
that American Jewry has "played the Holocaust card,"
exploiting the suffering of Jews as a political tool to
generate sympathy for Israeli policy and further the aims of
Zionism.

Finkelstein also spoke
of human rights abuses Israel has inflicted on
Arabs.

Many
in the crowd spoke of betrayal and outrage that
Finkelstein, whose parents both survived the ghettos and
concentration camps of Europe, would draw analogies
between Nazi and Israeli policies. So why wait in line to
hear the man speak for two hours?

It was part of a
carefully planned effort by the United Jewish Federation to
minimize the impact of Finkelstein's appearance by quietly
filling the seats of the lecture hall with Jews already
inured to his "ridiculous and vile distortions," said
Jeffrey Cohan, spokesman for the UJF.

Given several weeks'
notice of Finkelstein's appearance, the UJF, which
represents all Jewish organizations in the Pittsburgh area,
deployed a "rapid response team" to e-mail more than 400
people, asking them to show up, and early. Hillel Jewish
University Center of Pittsburgh conceived of the
seat-filling strategy; the United Jewish Federation helped
to execute it.

Cohan characterized
Finkelstein's support in the Jewish community as "minuscule"
and "very extreme fringe."

Ken Boas is one
of those supporters. Boas teaches English at the University
of Pittsburgh, and came to hear Finkelstein speak about his
support of the Palestinian struggle and Israel's "abhorrent
and criminal policies" against Palestinians.

"The sense is that if
you're Jewish, you need to be supportive of Israel and the
Zionist position," Boas said. "It makes it very difficult
for Jews to dissent without being branded as anti-Semitic or
self-hating."

"Just so you know, Ken
is wrong," said David Shtulman, executive director of
the American Jewish Committee's Pittsburgh chapter, standing
next to Boas. "All one has to do is take a look at Israeli
newspapers [to know that Jews can dissent]. There
are those that argue Israeli policies are too harsh and help
produce suicide bombers -- that's a legitimate point of
debate. But to use terms like 'Nazi' policies, 'ethnic
cleansing,' that goes beyond the pale. One has to wonder if
his point is simply to demonize."

The atmosphere was
tense. CMU administrator Indira Nair spoke first,
laying out the rules: no questions, no loud remarks, "no
noises that your mothers wouldn't approve of." Finkelstein
began his remarks with apologies to those who had come
"hoping for a circus."